


the treachery of images

by theexistentialqueer



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical language, Found Family, Gap Fillers, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, M/M, Misgendering, Pre-Relationship, References to Canon-Typical Violence, Trans Male Character, interludes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-08
Packaged: 2020-01-01 12:02:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 13,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18334256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theexistentialqueer/pseuds/theexistentialqueer
Summary: What you see is not what is. Mutsuki Tooru is a puzzle. And if Urie can solve that puzzle, it will make him stronger.(The development of Urie and Mutsuki's relationship, from Urie's point of view.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Update:** (10/18/19) - I feel like I should open this with an apology, but an apology's not quite right. I've spent the last year unpacking a lot of internalized transphobia and coming to a place where I can allow myself to think of myself as trans. It's been a long road. If my writing of Mutsuki carries with it (and I'm sure it does) that lingering transphobia: I'm sorry if it hurts you. I think that writing these pieces has made me stronger and helped me grow on my own journey of gender discovery. I thought about deleting these or orphaning them, but I don't want to cut myself off from writing that helped me grow towards understanding who I really am.
> 
> I should apologize to myself first and foremost for being afraid to embrace who I am.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Phew! I'm back. I got distracted rereading The Demon's Lexicon, and also Urie is a lot harder for me to write than Mutsuki. I had to reread all of re: then too, to figure out how I was going to pace this out and what canon moments I was going to reference and follow up on.
> 
> I started this intending it to be a one-shot, but the more segments I added, the more I realized publishing it as one self-contained fic would make it tonally dissonant, as each part references a different aspect of canon. So I decided to publish this as a multi-chapter. Don't get too excited at me doing a batch publish of a lot of chapters at once; it's definitely not finished yet!
> 
> The title is a reference to a painting by French surrealist painter René Magritte. The painting is of a pipe, but beneath it are painted the words, "This is not a pipe." About the painting, Magritte said, "The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture 'This is a pipe', I'd have been lying!"
> 
>  _Please note that this fic includes **explicit and deliberate** (on my part) **misgendering of a trans character**_. One of my goals in writing this is to work through Urie's thought process from suddenly realizing, "Oh, Mutsuki is a g(irl)uy," as the scanlation or official translation I read translated the original Japanese, to Urie just consistently thinking of Mutsuki as a guy and not questioning it.

He finds himself studying Mutsuki in absent moments, when his mind drifts blank and empties of all thought. Never when Mutsuki is looking at him, or when any of the others might notice--he's careful of that--but on those nights when Mutsuki is cleaning his dinner dishes, and Urie is leaning back against the couch, a towel over his damp hair and his mind comfortably numb from training and hard exercise. 

It's not that he's particularly interested, or that he even cares. Mutsuki was useful enough during the auction sweep that he could use him to find the auction guests, even though he'd contributed next to nothing after that. He'd seen the kill sheets, the single-digit next to Mutsuki's name. _Six kills. Pathetic._

_(Urie comes to to the feeling of his hand buried deep into something hot and wet and spongy, like he'd been mixing up ground meat. Kagune curled around him like a gentle embrace._

_"I get it, Urie-kun," someone says, "it's tough to be alone.")_

It's really not that he cares.

But at the academy junior school, they'd been encouraged to play logic games and perform thought experiments, to strengthen their cognitive skills, because an investigator needed more than brute strength; they needed an ability to reason as well. Mutsuki is a puzzle he can't quite make out.

And if he can solve him, it will make him a better investigator.

_Just you wait, Kuroiwa, you bastard. I'll outperform you a million times over._


	2. Chapter 2

_Mutsuki Tooru. Born 12/14/1997 to Mutsuki Takeshi and Mutsuki Hiromi, both deceased. One elder brother, Mutsuki Jouji, also deceased. Family killed by an unknown ghoul on XX/XX/2009. Taken in by the CCG and enrolled in Second Junior Academy. Above-average academic marks, below-average physical marks. Received special dispensation for **[REDACTED]**. Passed the Quinx aptitude test and underwent quinque kakouhou implantation surgery on XX/XX/2016. Assigned thereafter to Quinx Squad under the command of Rank 1 Investigator Sasaki Haise._

He still has copies of the Quinx squad files made for him when he was appointed squad leader. Shirazu must have been given copies at the time he was made Urie's replacement, though Urie doubts he's read them _(because he probably can't even read)_.

At the time he'd first read it, he hadn't thought anything of information being redacted from Mutsuki's report. Information was redacted all the time. Sometimes the ghoul involved in their family's murder was identified, but classified as too high-security of a subject. Sometimes the family had secret dealings going on that the CCG was prohibited from disclosing to lower-level investigators. Sometimes there's even a case where the subject had significantly personal information recorded, and they apply for a redaction request, and it's rare, but it gets approved.

Now he looks at the redacted section and reconsiders. Mutsuki is polite, considerate, unassuming. When he'd looking into his family, everything about them was ordinary: their jobs, their house, their preowned car, the schools their children went to.

And yet there was Mutsuki Tooru, ghoul investigator, survivor of a ghoul attack, with little palpable animosity towards ghouls, and an aptitude for the quinx procedure.

What was redacted?

The ghoul who killed his family?

How they were killed?

Why he survived?

Something from his family history?

His quinx aptitude?

His gender? _(But why would the CCG bother redacting that?)_

Urie realizes he's still thinking of Mutsuki as a _he_. He considers this, and concludes that even for him, it would be difficult, for such a fundamental aspect to a person's character, to think of a person one way and speak of them in another. If he started to think of Mutsuki as a woman, one day that might slip out when he's not thinking, because it's such irrelevant information to him, but if Mutsuki thinks it's relevant enough to hide it, Urie exposing him could shut him down.

And if that happens, how will Urie solve the riddle?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I considered cutting this segment because I thought it made Urie come across as too creepy, but then I thought, no, this is exactly the kind of creep level early!re: Urie would have been.
> 
> FTR, what was redacted, obviously, was how his family was killed and who actually killed them.


	3. Chapter 3

Christmas isn't something Urie has ever paid attention to, much less cared about.

It's so Sasaki, to want to celebrate a made-up holiday from a religion most people in their country don't even follow, and to invite a lot of people over, and cook too much food he can't even eat, and force them all to participate (although it's Mutsuki who enforces the last point, to his muted surprise. Somehow the auction made him grow a backbone).

It's so Sasaki too, to hand out gifts to them and put on a show in front of their superiors of how much he cares for his squad. Urie accepts his gift with a socially compulsory thank you, and he probably won't even use it. What does Sasaki know about music? He's probably the type that thinks something's better quality just because it costs more. (The fact that they actually are better than his when he tries them irritates him. He puts them carefully back into their box exactly the way they were packaged and puts the box in the back corner on the shelf at the top of his closet and is steadfastly determined to forget that the package is there.)

It's easy after Christmas to go back to his usual routine. They have so much downtime now, between cases, and he spends most of his time training. He wakes up in the morning, goes for a run, puts in a few hours at the office to work on his report, then leaves around 3 PM so he can spend a few hours at the gym.

When he returns home that evening, he pads into the kitchen like usual and grabs his carton of protein powder from the fridge. It's running low; he should probably buy a new one. He measures it out carefully into a glass of water and mixes them together until it's frothing, and shudders as he drinks it down. (What asshole decided to make all this stuff taste sweet?)

The house is quiet for a change; he recalls Sasaki had post-New Years visits scheduled for the next few days, and he'd insisted on taking Shirazu, as squad captain, with him. Urie had kept his attention firmly on his book at that announcement, to show them how little he cared. They'll probably be out late, good-natured Sasaki unable to politely refuse an invitation for drinks. He'd assume Yonebayashi was up in her room playing one of her stupid games, but her shoes hadn't been by the door; Sasaki probably dragged her along too. Mutsuki was most likely still at the office with Suzuya squad, as he'd been most days lately, going over details of the auction mop-up.

Maybe he'll try the training room tonight, he thinks, looking forward to the prospect of having the room to himself for once without being disturbed. There are few other places he can practice with his kagune. He'd started to really get a feel for its power during the operation, how long he could hold it for, how hard and strong he could make it, enough that it had felt like a real sword formed of his own body, one only he could use.

_(Until he'd lost control and stabbed one his own allies, done something more shameful than leaving a comrade behind to die.)_

Urie shoves that thought down with ferocious will as he pushes open the door to the training room.

He's surprised to find the lights on, and even more surprised to see Mutsuki, body held braced in a fighting stance, the wicked gleam of his quinque sprouting from each hand like a lethal flower.

"Urie-kun," Mutsuki says, looking equally surprised as he comes to attention, his stance loosening so he's upright, his quinque held loosely at his sides. "I didn't hear you come in."

"Yeah," Urie says, indifferent. "I didn't think anyone else was home. I didn't see any other shoes by the door."

"I took mine up to my room to clean them later," Mutsuki explains. "They're starting to look scuffed up, and I thought they looked a little unprofessional."

Urie just dips his chin at that and pushes into the room, letting the door swing closed behind him. He casts his eyes over the rest of the room, judging how much space he has to work with.

"I can leave," Mutsuki offers, palming both his quinque in one hand so he can push his sweat-slick hair off his forehead. "I've been here long enough, anyway, and I have things to do--"

"It's fine," Urie says shortly, and Mutsuki nods imperceptibly. If it's Mutsuki, he won't bother him. The worst he would do is watch him curiously, but he'd keep his mouth shut and his thoughts to himself and stay out of Urie's way.

Urie rolls his neck and stretches out his arms, moving through his warm-up stretches. He doesn't have to do much, already limber from his exercise at the gym, but he's not stupid enough to not take the necessary precautions. With Mutsuki in the room, he doesn't have the freedom of space needed to test his kagune the way he'd like, but his quinque is in the adjoining gear room, and there's room enough for that. As he's thinking, his gaze falls to the side, and he finds himself watching Mutsuki.

Mutsuki is just shifting back into a different stance, one knife held poised to attack and the other in a guard position. His face is set in an expression of focused determination, and he seems to draw himself in, like he's gathering something up, not nerve, but a kind of focused willpower, an intention to get the moves exactly right. And then his right hand lashes out with the knife, careful and controlled, and when it hits just apex of his reach, he pulls it suddenly back and flips the other knife, the one held in defense, so it's facing opposite and slashes it out, hard and fast across the air like he's slicing an imaginary throat.

The movements don't look natural quite yet, not unconscious, but they look studied, and Urie realizes Mutsuki has been practicing, and practicing hard. When Urie's gaze catches on Mutsuki's wrists, he sees the hard definition of muscle building there in fine cords. Before the operation, his wrists had still looked delicate, like a girl's.

"Do you want to spar?" Urie finds himself asking.

He's surprised to hear it's his own voice asking, and equally surprised when Mutsuki looks up, something in his look showing that he was aware of Urie watching him, and nods. "If it doesn't get in the way of your own training," Mutsuki qualifies politely, "I'd appreciate it."

"You use rinkaku," Urie supplies over his shoulder as he moves towards the gear room. "I have a bikaku. It's lower rated than yours too, so it'll be good practice for both of us."

He doesn't know why he's doing this, he reflects as he enters the gear room and grabs the suitcase housing his quinque. Only there had been something to the determined set to Mutsuki's shoulders, the way his body had tensed and then suddenly moved, like a cat coiled and lashing out, and a thought dancing in the back of Urie's mind that says, _He's good. But he could be so much better._

And also, he remembers, he has a riddle to solve.

He presses the release button on his suitcase and returns to the training room with Tsunagi sitting comfortably in his hand, not quite a part of his body the way his kagune is, but almost, _almost_. He takes up a stance across from Mutsuki that is neither aggressive nor defensive, but neutral, prepared to shift either way.

"Er," Mutsuki says, "how do you want to do this? Sensei usually has us just attack him randomly, so I don't know--"

It's the mention of Sasaki that makes up Urie's mind, and he lurches forward fast, feet slamming across the floor in a rush, so he can leap up and bring his quinque down over Mutsuki's head. In a match between the two of them, height is one of Mutsuki's many weaknesses. Mutsuki makes a sound of surprise.

He is there, and then he slips suddenly away, like a dancer, and Urie's quinque cuts through air. Mutsuki doesn't stop moving, pulls his body down and out and turns, and he has his arms crossed, the quinque in his left hand a sliver of steel by his face, and the one in his right jutting out sideways beneath his arms. Urie pulls his sword up into a guard position, cross-wise and straight over his torso, so he's ready when Mutsuki launches forward. He's fast, Urie realizes, and when did Mutsuki get that fast? To his surprise, it's Mutsuki's right hand that leads, slicing out towards Urie's belly, and Urie angles his sword down, fast, to catch the blow, and now he's wide open to Mutsuki's left hand, and the knife bearing down on him from above--

Urie throws himself backwards and away just as he sees Mutsuki check himself and jerk the knife away.

So much control, and in such a short period of time. He's been taking lessons from Suzuya, Urie realizes, and instead of feeling the familiar hot surge of jealousy, he finds the corners of his mouth curling up. He'd thought he was being indulgent, and instead he found a practice partner he'd never have suspected.

Mutsuki falls back into a defensive stance, breathing hard, and Urie lifts Tsunagi up, point held out, like an invitation, trying not to smile. He remembers reading Mutsuki's personnel file and seeing his PE scores.

"Not bad," Urie says grudgingly, but his voice is almost warm.

Mutsuki smiles shyly, but pleased. "Thanks."

Urie wins in the end, because of course he does. They weren't evenly matched to begin with. But Urie feels a strange sense of accomplishment permeating him at how hard of a fight Mutsuki put up, and Mutsuki, sweat-soaked and breathless, looks pleased and sated. The sweat drenching his shirt makes it cling to him in tight, odd ways, and Urie can see the outline of something where a bra would be, but not really a bra, something pressing down and holding, encircling the upper-mid part of Mutsuki's torso. Urie hurriedly looks away, but he's pretty sure Mutsuki noticed. He hears the sound of damp fabric being pulled away from skin and fluttered in the air until Mutsuki lets it go so it can settle against his body loosely.

Urie probably wouldn't have even noticed, if he hadn't smelled blood on Mutsuki at the auction that didn't smell like other blood, like fresh blood spilled in a fight, like blood gushing from an open vein.

Urie, not knowing where to go from here, returns to the earlier frame of their conversation.

"Thanks for the spar," he says flatly. "You did pretty well."

"Thank you," Mutsuki mutters, his hands pressed over his chest like a shield. "Don't mention it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I rewrote this segment about five times, but the bit about the protein powder was there from the beginning and I was damned determined to keep it there in the end.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The name of the sixth ward of Tokyo is Taitou. Its most famous district is Ueno, a subdistrict of Asakusa, which is home to a large park, a famous zoo, a temple, and several museums.
> 
> Ward 18 is Arakawa and it shares ward 6's northern border.
> 
>  _Ore_ is a Japanese first-person pronoun typically used by men and only by men. Of the various personal pronouns, it's the most explicitly masculine (the other common male first-person pronoun, _boku_ , might occasionally be used by tomboyish girls, but it's very uncommon for a girl to use _ore_.
> 
> In the manga, Urie doesn't team up with Saiko. Sasaki splits up Urie and Saiko because they both have a strong sense of smell, and assigns Mutsuki as Urie's partner and Shirazu as Saiko's.

Tonight they're in the sixth ward, the same place they've been for the past three days.

Taitou looks different at night from the alleys and hidden places, seen through a mask. He'd been here a few times when he was a child with his mother--and, on the rare occasion, his father--mostly to visit Ueno Park. He remembers the bright spring sunshine dusting over cherry blossoms, the spacious halls of museums, fragrant temple gardens, a sprawling zoo, and a restaurant that served especially good oyakodon.

But they're not in the park, with is crowded, curving paths and crowding, carefully pruned trees. They're in the shadowy backways of Taitou, hunting for ghouls.

But not to kill.

Mutsuki is quiet beside him, just a step behind, keeping subtle careful watch of their rear while Urie studies what's before them. He seems to have grown a sense for what's expected of him now: their first day, Urie hadn't even had to tell Mutsuki to watch their backs: Mutsuki had just done so, quietly and carefully relaying any relevant information to Urie so Urie could decide where to lead them, and they'd evaded two dangerous tails Urie would not have been able to track otherwise.

He'd been apprehensive at being paired with Mutsuki at first--if forced, Urie would have picked Shirazu, because Shirazu was a (relatively) known quantity and (relatively) reliable that way--but Mutsuki has quietly proven over the past few days that as a partner, he is more than capable.

Which means Urie can focus on what he's supposed to be doing: finding a ghoul they can get information out of.

They're holed up in an abandoned office building for the night, right on the edge of the border with Arakawa, on the top floor so they can escape by rooftop if someone breaks in. They're both enjoying a field dinner of cup ramen cooked in a windowless bathroom over a camp stove left there by a considerate former homeless occupier. They don't even have chopsticks on them; Urie has to tilt the contents of the cup into his mouth like he's drinking water, only the water is salty and has noodles in it, and Urie has to slurp them down and chew.

Mutsuki has already finished his meager dinner and is sitting quietly with his mask smoothed out over his legs, tracing his fingers over it, his mouth pinched in a small frown.

"Do you think there's a meaning to it?" Mutsuki asks suddenly, looking Urie in the eye. "The design, I mean."

Urie looks away.

"Maybe," he says. "I don't see why it's a big deal."

Mutsuki's brow knots up at that, and he looks back down at his mask, pressing the wrinkles out of it. "Well, I mean, when that HySy guy talked to me, he asked questions--like if I liked my eyepatch, and I said yes--and made weird comments about my face and my clothes..."

He falls silent again. Urie leans back on his arms and looks up at the ceiling, the panels rotting and letting dust seep through holes in them. The whole building smells of mildew, rot, and abandonment.

When he'd first seen his own mask, it had put him in mind of a bird of prey: an osprey, or an eagle, or a hawk. He'd looked at it and thought he'd feel comfortable enough wearing it that he could ignore it was there and focus on the task at hand.

Seeing Mutsuki in his mask for the first time was different. It had been weird seeing it on him, and it's been weird since: the wrong eye uncovered, and the rest of Mutuski's face wrapped as if in bandages, like the flesh of his of his face was sliced or rotten, the disfigurement hidden from view; like the body beneath was necrotic, the criss-crossed wrappings covering a mummy whose internal organs had been gutted and pickled and jarred. His discomfort wearing it made him look washed-out and pale.

Looking at Mutsuki now, he wonders if maybe it was the design of the mask itself that made Mutsuki look washed-out and pale, made so by whatever hidden meaning the design held.

What comments had the mask-maker made about Mutsuki's face and clothes? Urie hadn't heard, but he can guess. Looking at Mutsuki, and knowing what he knows, he can see the soft, delicate angle of a girl's face in Mutsuki's profile, and he'd seen the way a dress fit Mutsuki, like the look of it was natural.

But aside from the auction, he's used to Mutsuki this way, with his close-cut hair, his slacks and sweaters and button-down shits, his loafers and oxfords and ties. His carefully neutral language, paired with that assertive use of _ore_ to refer to himself.

Knowing what he knows, thinking what he thinks the mask-maker asked, he sees the wraps of Mutsuki's mask in a different way: not hiding dead flesh, but flesh that looks too delicate, too feminine, turning something soft into something terrible, and strange, and nightmarish.

And seeing the way Mutsuki is looking at his mask, he can tell Mutsuki has arrived at that same conclusion already.

Another puzzle piece falls into place.

"What does it matter, if it has a meaning?" Urie asks.

Mutsuki looks up at him, startled, and his hands have finally stopped fidgeting with the mask. "Well," Mutsuki tries, "meanings are important, and it matters how a person--how I'm--being portrayed."

"No," Urie says, " _(That's stupid.)_ It doesn't matter how some stranger makes you look. It's what you think of yourself that matters. What others think of you only matters as far as it gets you to your goal."

Mutsuki is looking at him with eyes a little too-wide, measuring and careful as he weighs Urie's words.

"What do you think of me?" Mutsuki asks suddenly.

Urie refuses to meet his gaze. _(I think you're an annoyance at best and a nuisance at worst, but you're a puzzle, and if I can solve you, it will make me better. If I can make you strong enough, it will make me better.)_

"You're decent backup," Urie says.

Mutsuki laughs, the sound relieved and a little pleased.


	5. Chapter 5

They bury Shirazu. It's Mutsuki who finds him afterwards.

"We would have liked to have had you with us, Urie-kun," Mutsuki says in his quiet, polite way. "It didn't feel right, not having a commanding officer there to do his part."

"I'm sure Sasaki could have filled that role just fine," Urie remarks, and there's no acid in his voice, just clipped certainty. Sasaki would have done more than well. Sasaki, who had _the ability_ , and Urie who didn't.

Sasaki, who had not been there to let Shirazu die.

"Sensei hasn't been himself since the operation," Mutsuki says softly, "and it's selfish to say, but Saiko-chan and I would have appreciated having you there."

Urie feels his face tense up in a grimace. He's facing away from Mutsuki, so Mutsuki can't see it.

"Mutsuki," Urie asks, the question coming wild and untethered from his usual self-control, "what do you think my goal was in joining the CCG?"

He can't see Mutsuki, but he can hear him, quiet and contemplative and sure (and when did Mutsuki get this strong, that he could look the death of a comrade in the face and be calm and sure), and Mutsuki says, "So you could get stronger and hurt everyone who let your father die alone. But Shirazu-kun didn't die alone. We were with him."

Urie has nothing to say to that.

Mutsuki turns to rejoin the others, and he pauses, looking back at Urie over his shoulder. "So don't mourn alone either," he says before he walks away.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Apparently I uploaded this last night but didn't post it.

"New Quinxes?" Urie asks with a faint note of surprise in his voice. Whatever he'd been expecting from this meeting, it hadn't been this.

He's sitting across a desk from CCG Bureau Director Washuu Yoshitoki, who's just pushed a file across the desk towards him. Urie picks it up delicately in one gloved hand and flips it open. The first report has a photo paperclipped to the front of it of a lithe, dark-haired woman with a dancer's body. He runs his eyes over the report, taking in words that jump out at him, and is increasingly surprised when he sees a reference to the Sunlit Garden in the woman's background.

Whoever else is detailed in this file, they're giving the Quinxes an elite.

"Recent losses notwithstanding," the director says, and there's a note of sympathy to his voice that undercuts his spare, clinical words, "the Quinx experiment has proven to be a success. The honors and advancements earned by the members of your squad in such a short period of time speak for themselves. Quinx abilities get results. As such, I managed to get the necessary approval for what you might call a second generation."

Urie flips to the next page, prefaced with a photo of a man with pale, dusky hair and an easy smile. He recognizes the family name distantly, although he's not sure where he knows it from. He scans the academy scores with approval--above average marks in all courses, a few honors. His Quinx aptitude is high, but nowhere near touching Yonebayashi's. The makings of a solid Third Class Investigator.

The third recruit has a mass of dark, unruly hair falling to cover his eyes, and looks unremarkable aside from that. But it's his name that stands out--Aura--and at that Urie's eyebrow twitches in surprise, until he sees the man's academy unimpressive academy scores. Yet he passed the Quinx aptitude test, and there's a note at the bottom of the page from an instructor about his untapped potential. (Mutsuki and Yonebayashi didn't seem to have much potential at the start, either.)

All told, a pretty good hand to be given.

The chairman watches him without comment as he closes the file, and then he says, "Of course you'll be their captain, but I'd like you to be their mentor, as well."

"What?" Urie asks, startled. "Me as their mentor? What about Investigator Sasaki?"

The chairman sighs. "Investigator Sasaki, as you know, has been removed from his assignment to the Quinx Squad by his own request, and is now serving S3 as a secretary for Arima Squad. While I had certainly hoped he would continue to be involved with the Quinx project, his position with Arima Squad makes it impossible. As such, you are the most qualified individual to mentor the new Quinxes."

(Most qualified, he sure as hell is.)

"Sir," Urie says, straightening his posture so he's at attention, even though he's still seated. "I would be honored to mentor the new generation of Quinxes."

"Then it's decided," Washuu says, pleased. "By the way, have you come to a decision regarding your adjuntant? I recall asking you to nominate a candidate the last time we met."

"Sir," Urie says cautiously, because he's been struggled with making a choice. He only has two people to choose from, and he wants to nominate Mutsuki. He doesn't possess the same overpowering combat ability of Yonebayashi, but he's quick and versatile, and his investigative skills are sharper. Yonebayashi may have improved rapidly over the past few months, but Mutsuki had just gotten stronger, better, and faster.

But recently, he's never around. He was on loan to Suzuya Squad for three weeks, and then the Itou squad asked to borrow him for two. He's been home at the Chateau maybe one full week of the last six.

He'd tried broaching the conversation with Mutsuki a few nights ago, one of the rare nights lately he'd spent at the Chateau, and Mutsuki had smiled ruefully. "At this rate, I don't think they're going to let me settle down enough to be tied to just one squad," he'd said. Urie didn't think so either.

Mutsuki had proven himself too capable for that. And if he has the chance to advance faster that way, Urie is the last person who has any right to hold him back.

"I've decided to go with Investigator Yonebayashi, sir," Urie tells the director.

Washuu raises his eyebrows at that. "An unorthodox choice."

"Sir," Urie says, " _(I agree.)_ Investigator Yonebayashi has shown rapid improvements over the past few months in combat, investigation, and time maintenance. She has been a decisive factor in several instances, including the fight against the Nutcracker and the undercover ghoul investigation. And while she has no personal ambitions, her highest priority is the safety of her teammates, which is the most important quality for a squad captain or vice-captain to possess."

As he says it--and he'd planned out the argument he needed to make beforehand--but it's only as he's saying it that he realizes not only is it true, but that he's been considering Yonebayashi as a valid candidate for his vice-captain in her own right. Mutsuki may be the natural choice, but Yonebayashi is an equally good one, and her personality balances out well against Urie's.

Washuu signs off his approval.

After the meeting he takes the elevator down to the first floor, going over the file on the new Quinxes with more attention. The elevator stops off at the eighteenth floor for a new passenger to enter, and Urie, unconcerned, doesn't look up until he hears a soft voice say, "Oh, Urie-kun."

Urie closes the file and looks up to see Mutsuki stepping into the elevator, his mouth curving into a hesitant smile.

"This is a surprise," Mutsuki says as he presses the button to close the elevator doors. He has a leather folio in his hands, the kind used for distributing orders, and the presence of it tugs at Urie's gaze. "I don't get back to the Chateau much these days, so it's always nice when I get to see you or Saiko-chan."

"Yeah," Urie says, tucking the file under his arm, and resits the urge to stare at the folio Mutsuki is holding. "Will you be there tonight?"

"I was going to stop by," Mutsuki says, "to see you, actually. But if you're here at headquarters, that makes things easier, because I have a lot to do tonight too. Is everything okay there?"

"Yeah," Urie says again, thumb brushing over the smooth manila folder he's holding. "We're getting new recruits."

"New Quinxes?" Mutsuki asks with surprise.

"The director said we've proven the experiment is a success, so he was able to get approval to move forward. Three candidates, in all."

"That's good news," Mutsuki says, and he sounds pleased, and a little proud, and a little self-conscious, because he can hear the compliment buried in the director's praise.

The elevator descends slowly, a faint hum coming from the cables holding it, and Urie can feel that peculiar sensation you only get in elevators of gravity's gentle grip pulling you in a controlled fall.

"Did you make a decision on the vice-captaincy?" Mutsuki asks, neutral and polite.

"I did," Urie says. "I nominated Yonebayashi."

Mutsuki is smiling at him, and the smile is carefully neutral too. "She'll be surprised, I bet. I wish I could congratulate her. Will you tell her I said so?"

"I'll tell her," Urie says. ( _Though you were my first choice.)_

When they reach the ground floor, they step out together, in sync, and Mutsuki looks around surreptitiously before asking, "Do you have a moment? I hate to bother you if you're busy, only--" He hefts the leather folio in his hand. "I need this addressed so I can go to my next appointment."

"Sure," Urie says flatly, and leads the way to a small conference room off the hallway that's rarely used. He flips the lights on and Mutsuki closes the door behind them, and then locks it.

"Sorry," Mutsuki says as he turns away from the door and approaches the conference table. He sets the folio down and lets it fall open softly. "It's just, this is top-level confidential."

He doesn't offer a pen. He doesn't need to, because Urie is pulling one out of his breast pocket. He reads over the order.

Another temporary transfer, to Hachikawa Squad, to assist with a recon expedition on an island in Tokyo Bay to assess where the principle location of the targets, numbers unknown, and report back to CCG headquarters with the premise location and an estimation of the size of the threat.

And according to Mutsuki, it's top-level confidential.

Urie's hand, pen held delicately between his gloved fingers, hovers over the paper. He has to sign off on any temporary transfer, because Mutsuki is still officially a member of the Quinx Squad.

He looks up at Mutsuki with a question in his eyes.

Mutsuki sees it, and the slightest tremble goes through him, and he looks away, his earlier pretenses at cheerfulness gone.

He looks small, and scared, and fiercely determined.

"I'm not supposed to tell you," Mutsuki mumbles, "so you didn't hear it from me. But they think they found where all of Aogiri Tree is headquartered."

It feels like someone has poured frozen water down Urie's collar, and those tendrils of bitter winter cold are scraping down his spine like fingers. His own fingers tighten around the pen, white knuckles hidden by his glove.

He runs through his mental file of Hachikawa Squad, their numbers and their strength, what kind of quinque they carry. He'd never thought much of Hachikawa himself, whose record in the Owl Suppression Operation was an embarrassment. The few times he'd met Hachikawa's deputy, she seemed to fade into the background, like a shadow.

_All of Aogiri Tree._

He feels Shirazu's body in his arms, blood slipping out to drench hot and quiet into the fabric of Urie's uniform, hears Shirazu pleading "Why aren't you guys saying anything?", and the image of Shirazu standing upright before them, a gaping hole in his side so cavernous they could see his spine, the flesh trying weakly to knit itself together, is seared onto the backs of Urie's eyelids.

He thinks of an abandoned sister and an empty grave.

When he looks up at Mutsuki again, Mutsuki is standing stolidly, every ounce of quiet strength filling him up and brimming over.

"It's just recon, Urie-kun," Mutsuki says quietly, and he sounds sure, but he also sounds like he's trying to believe it as well. He can hear the way Mutsuki says it and and sees the file being transferred to some investigator who knows nothing, knows something, can see how this breaks down. "We'll be moving in small numbers to avoid detection, and then we'll report back here with what we find. Then they can send out a larger force, and we can take care of Aogiri once and for all."

He remembers a Mutsuki so weak he couldn't handle an infiltration mission and needed someone to escort him out alone. Mutsuki, in a soft blue dress, his eyes brushed with powder and his lips painted, a delicate line of pearls circling his neck. Mutsuki, wrapped in Sasaki's coat, curled towards Urie, Urie's hand in his belly, and Mutsuki's kagune curved around Urie like an embrace. Mutsuki had seemed so slight and feminine in that moment.

He remembers that, and it feels disrespectful somehow, to think of Mutsuki in that way. In a way that uses words like _soft_ and _delicate, slight_  and _feminine_.

The Mutsuki standing before him is all lean muscle, a fine-edged knife wrapped in cotton, smelling slightly of oil and metal and shadows. He was weak once. And then he grew strong, so fast.

Urie looks down at the order, presses his lips into a thin line, and signs it.

_All disadvantages in this world are a result of one's lack of ability_ , the phantom memory of Sasaki whispers in his ear.

If he has to bury Mutsuki too, it will be his own fault. He can't fail Shirazu again.


	7. Chapter 7

Urie is deposed, discharged from the hospital, and returns home to a squad placed on standby. Yonebayashi and the other Qs had visited him, and even Kuroiwa, to his surprise (Urie had kept his thoughts carefully neutral during that visitation). He'd had a hope dancing at the back of his mind that Mutsuki would stop by, but in the end, Mutsuki never did.

The bureau chief is dead, and the acting bureau chief has yet to do any acting.

Christmas is different this year. There's no one to cheerfully force them into a family-like celebration. Urie can make them be together, but he can't make them be a family, not yet; he doesn't know how to do that yet.

Prioritizing his relationships with others for their own sake instead of to milk them for personal gain is too new to him now. He feels natural enough with Yonebayashi and Mutsuki, but it's harder with the new Quinxes.

He comes home from a run on Christmas Day to Yonebayashi humming ominously in the kitchen (ominous because Yonebayashi in the kitchen for any reason other than to retrieve food is a reason to be afraid), and Higemaru muttering something indecipherable in response.

"What are you doing?" he asks warily as he steps into the kitchen, tucking his earbuds into his pocket. They're the ones Sasaki gave him, a year ago today, the ones he'd promised he'd never use. It's probably something of a betrayal to the CCG to be using them, but his old ones finally tore a hole in the cord, and he's saving his money for something far more important.

Besides, wastefulness is a character flaw.

"Squad captain!" Yonebayashi exclaims, stumbling at her place on the stool in front of the stove. Higemaru jolts and catches her elbow before she falls so she can turn around and beam at him. "We were just deciding what we should make for Christmas dinner."

She says it so plainly, like it's that easy. Like making a pretend family into a real one is that simple.

For Yonebayashi, who came into a house full of strangers and started calling her boss mom, maybe it is.

The sight of her in an apron is plenty disconcerting, though.

Urie rolls up his sleeves and pushes through the doorway so he can wash his hands at the sink. "First of all, you," he says, leveling a stern glare in Yonebayashi's direction, "aren't cooking. You can't even make rice properly."

"What!" Yonebayashi looks outraged, and horrified, and mortified, and probably some other adjective that ends in _-ied_. "And what do you know?" she demands.

"I can at least cook rice," he says archly, though he's vividly aware of how lame of a comeback it is. Children can cook rice. He shuts off the water and dries his hands.

"Ummmmmm," Higemaru puts in, taller than Yonebayashi but hovering behind her like a shadow. "What if we ask Hsiao? She's definitely the best cook among us."

Urie regards Higemaru approvingly, and Yonebayashi looks pleased, as if she thought of it herself.

Yonebayashi runs headlong after Hsiao, and Higemaru wanders more sedately to find Aura. Urie busies himself measuring out enough rice for five people and rinsing the gleaming white grains in the sink.

In the end, Hsiao takes one look at the contents of the fridge and sends Higemaru running with a shopping list and instructions to return within thirty minutes and no later, on pain of punishment.

In the end, they're seated around the chateau's dining room table, Yonebayashi at his right and Hsiao, Higemaru, and Aura situated around the sides.

It almost feels right.

Except the ghost of Sasaki swirls around them like a mist with shadows for eyes, and the spot at his left is empty.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And with this chapter, I just bumped the rating up to mature. I knew I was going to get here eventually.
> 
> If you were particularly disturbed by what Mutsuki did to Torso's body, be warned, because this chapter makes explicit reference to it.

"Rank 1 Urie," a man from records he dimly remembers is named Tousaka says, stopping Urie one day on his way out of the office. "We received a report that seems to meet what you're looking for."

He looks faintly ill as he hands it over, like he's used to handling the lighter duty reports.

Urie takes it from him and nods in thanks. "Do I need to shred this once I read it?"

Tousaka pales even further. "Please," he says, turning to hurry away.

Urie tucks it into his bag and returns home.

It's quiet. Aura is on a few days' leave visiting his aunt in the hospital, and Yonebayashi is leading Hsiao and Higemaru on a rudimentary patrol of one of the safer wards.

There are leftovers in the fridge from a few days ago, and that's certainly more appetizing than anything he could make himself and more convenient than takeout, so he pulls the container out and portions into a bowl enough for himself. He never reheats food if he can help it--he's read too many articles on how microwaves can reduce nutritional value--so he takes it up to his room to eat his meal cold.

After he sets the bowl down on his desk and the file carefully beside it, he divests himself of his suit and changes into a tshirt and a pair of sweatpants. He retrieves his phone and sits down at his desk, and it's only as he pushes his earbuds into his ears that he realizes he's _procrastinating_.

Urie has never procrastinated.

He turns a level gaze to the file on his desk. It looks innocent, a slice of manila card with crisp white pages hidden within its fold, a dark red line drawn straight across the cover to indicate the file contained within should be shredded immediately after review. Tousaka from records had looked sick just handing it over to him.

Suddenly Urie realizes he's been procrastinating on purpose, something buried deep within him too afraid to read this report. Now that he's aware of it, he can feel it, a quiet sort of anxiety. A feeling he's not used to.

It's the file making him feel this way.

Urie takes a deliberate bite of his meal and flips open the report.

It's from an autopsy.

By the time he's finished reading, he has to put his dinner aside, the file closed carefully beside it. He has an electric shredder, and he'll shred it later, but for now the characters on the report are bleeding together in his mind until they become lines, the lines fill with colors, and they create an image before Urie's eyes of a night-dark cave, a rancid smell crawling through the air like a wet, living thing, the shadows forming into uneven shapes around him as he takes careful, uneasy steps forward, and at the end of the cave the shadows twist into a nightmare simulacrum of a body without legs, or arms, or a head, and a gash between its legs leaking curdled blood, drying in the shape of a bloody member.

Urie has no proof, but he can feel it with a certainty, deep in his gut. He'd seen the photos, just one photo, repeated dozens of times, pinned to the wall of Mutsuki's room in a macabre collage, each photo held pinned to the wall by a knife stabbed with vicious force through a woman's face.

If only he could get him to come home.

He wonders what Shirazu would say.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Urie has feelings.
> 
> I'm almost thirty. I've been in fandom long enough that I can use uwu unironically, right?

After the wedding, Urie finds himself walking down by the river, his arm crooked so his hand is hanging over his shoulder, his jacket dangling from his fingers. He can still hear the faint sounds of conversation carrying through the air from the church lawn, a handful of guests still loitering in the yard before heading to the reception. He'd told the others to go on without him, that he'd take a cab, and walked away.

He doesn't particularly care if he's late, though he knows he should.

Now his mind is revolving on after the ceremony, a tense conversation beneath trees just on the edge of budding, bare branches scratching at the pale blue sky. The wind swirling through them had sounded like a tiny, pained moan, and the bright sun had seemed perverse in context.

He wonders what Shirazu would have done, if he would have said the right words. But then, not even Shirazu would have expected Mutsuki's suicidal resolution, his desperate profession. Not even Shirazu would have predicted Mutsuki, fragile and raging, confessing he loves Sasaki, a desire so beyond hope that no language in the world has a word that can describe it.

And within that, something in Urie feels off-balance, like a child's top, recklessly spinning.

Because he hadn't realized until that moment, how he'd come to care for Mutsuki before he'd started to care for the others. How one shameful moment in an opera house, he'd felt a warm chin resting gently on his shoulder, warm red empennages curing around him like arms in an embrace, and a smell of blood that was not like blood lingering in the air.

He'd thought, _She's_ _a girl_ , and in some way intangile way that had altered his perception. The Mutsuki who had been weak and useless became the Mutsuki who was weak and fragile, and by being fragile, he was deserving of protection. He'd looked for the little tells, the gentle, delicate curve of his jaw, the way he held his hand, curved into a loose fist, over his mouth when he laughed, how his voice sounded only just plausibly deep enough. 

Urie had watched as Mutsuki grew stronger, went from bone-thin to knife-thin, his delicate lines paring into edges, like a blade, and somehow along the way, the fundamental social structures he'd known had fallen away. He'd look at Mutsuki and remember the opera house, and he'd omit the word _fragile_ from his memory. He'd see Mutsuki in his usual attire, and not think costume. He'd hear Mutsuki speak, and he'd forget the word pretense. Other words--graceful, gentle, sensitive, soft--had lost their meaning, in trying to solve the puzzle of Mutsuki.

Except Mutsuki isn't a puzzle. He is a person. 

And somehow, along the way, that person had fallen, and Urie had been saved, and that person had come to mean more to Urie than he could understand.

He hears a twig snap and can tell from the scent that it's Yonebayashi, picking her way carefully down the uneven ground of the hill to join him, careless of her dress catching on any snags. He'd been surprised at seeing how she'd put herself together for the occasion, the normally careless Yonebayashi tight-laced and powdered. Distantly, he'd thought, she looked pretty, though of course beside Hsiao's sleek beauty, anyone looked plain.

"How long are you going to be out here, squad captain?" she asks.

Urie stops to look at her, mindful of his unkempt appearance--his hair wind-ruffled, his jacket slung uncharacteristically over his shoulder--and says, "I told the rest of you to go."

"You didn't say it was an order!" she crows. "So we decided to stay, because we were worried about you."

Once, Urie had been scornful of that sort of consideration, but he understands now. He'd thought that just by telling them to do something, they'd do it, but instead they'd stayed behind to make sure he was okay, and by this point they'll all be late for the reception, and they'll all look terrible, him as their leader most of all.

It was Yonebayashi who led them in this, he has no doubt.

And if it was one of them in his place, he'd do the same for them.

He looks at her and realizes that she knows. Not about Urie, not about his current turmoil of feelings, but about Mutsuki--and that she must know Urie knows too, from the way she is looking at him--and she is waiting on Urie to see what he says.

"He's not coming home," Urie says, because he doesn't know what else to say. He can't explain how or why this distresses him.

Yonebayashi's sighs, her mouth twisting into a little frown. "I didn't think he would. Mucchan is stupid when he's being stubborn."

He expects that to be it, but she continues, uncharacteristically grave. "When you're used to people putting you in a box, it's inevitable that you start to suffocate, and then it's easy to lose it."

Yonebayashi, forced into the Quinx procedure and made into an investigator by a mother who only wanted the money from it. Maybe shutting herself up in her room and drowning herself in fiction was a way of losing it.

"Poor Mucchan," Yonebayashi sighs, looking away towards some invisible speck in the distance. "He's going to get worse before he gets better."

Urie clenches his fist, feels the tight pull of muscles, the fabric of his gloves biting into his skin.

"We'll just have to catch him when he falls," he says.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started out "how Urie's view of Mutsuki evolves" and turned into "let's explore Urie's character development," and I'm okay with that.
> 
> Also like JSYK I actually have a final chapter planned, MAYBE I'LL ACTUALLY GET THERE!!!!!

In all this chaos, it's easy to steal one of the warden keys and unlock the cell.

Frankly, he doesn't even feel like he's doing anything wrong.

Urie pulls the door open, letting light spill into the dark cell, and Kuroiwa Takeomi looks up at him from his seat.

He has to blink several times, his eyes tearing as they adjust to the bright hallway lights. "Urie...?" he asks, his voice wavering slightly.

"Stand up," Urie says. He can't help the way his voice comes out clipped, cutting off the emotions pent up in his chest.

Kuroiwa stands up and takes a few steps forward, and as his eyes adjust, they widen at the sight of Urie standing before him.

"Are you okay?" Kuroiwa asks. "Whose blood is that? You're soaked in it."

"A few people's," Urie says, " _(including your father's)_. Do you think you can make a run for it?"

"A run for..." Kuroiwa's expression changes from horror to surprise. "You're helping me escape?"

Urie grits his teeth. "And your wife, if she's capable. Let's get moving."

He doesn't have to repeat himself. Kuroiwa follows as Urie leads the way down the hall, through the maze-like hallways of the detainment ward. Unlike in Cochlea, they don't bother changing the denizens' cells every few days.

Suddenly the building shudders, a loud **_B O O M_**  trembles through the air, and the lights in the hallway flicker wildly. Urie and Kuroiwa stumble towards opposite walls for purchase as the floor bucks under them and gravity yanks at them sickeningly. They brace themselves for several long moments, until the shuddering stops and dust stops trickling from the ceiling, and in the still quiet all they can hear is the lights flickering.

Urie stands for a moment, looking at his watch, the face illuminated by an internal LED. It's just after 0530.

He straightens and keeps moving.

After a moment to recover himself, Kuroiwa follows. "What the hell was that?"

"Something erupted out of the ground in the 24th ward and began destroying everything," Urie tells him, turning a sharp corner. "The JSFD was called in for artillery support. CCG headquarters is in chaos. It's settled down overnight, but that thing is still out there, and the fighting has slowed, but it's not over."

"What about the bureau chief?"

"The bureau chief?" Urie laughs darkly, the nightmares he'd fought in that office still vivid in his memory. He'll be waking up from dreams of being swallowed alive for weeks. "We thought the bureau chief might be in league with the ghouls. It turns out he's in league with the Pierrot, and also a ghoul himself."

He can hear Kuroiwa, breathing hard, not as much from keeping up with Urie as he is from processing the information being thrown at him as they move. And he knows he's keeping the most important piece of information back, but Urie is discovering that right at this moment, he's a coward, and he'd rather give Kuroiwa a happy reunion with his wife than the prospect of his father's inevitable death.

(If the the special investigator dies, and Kuroiwa hates him for it, it will be nothing Urie doesn't deserve.)

They reach the room, and Urie comes to a halt. He has to hold his arm out to stop Kuroiwa from rushing bodily towards it. "I have a key," he says dryly, holding the card up to display before swiping it through the lock.

There's a click from the door, and Urie steps aside so Kuroiwa can throw it open.

He blocks out their too-warm, frantic conversation, both their voices low but not low enough for Urie's heightened sense of hearing to discern their words. Instead he focuses on deliberately casting a glance up and down the corridor, noting the placement of cameras and giving a level look to each one.

_"We have to find a way," he said to Yonebayashi, sitting on a swing like the kind he used to play on as a child._

_"And what if there isn't one?" she asked, despairing._

_He stood up, the chain of the swing creaking behind him, and looked down at her. He hadn't smiled, the way some people do when they're trying to be reassuring. For Urie, to reassure wasn't to smile; to reassure was to promise. He stood up and looked down at her, and his mouth was drawn into a frown, and his gaze was level._

_"Then we'll just become terrorists, okay?"_

He looks dead into the focus of the camera and dares it to condemn him.

Kuroiwa says a quiet final word to his wife and steps out of her cell.

"Urie," he says, "I don't know how to thank you. Why did you do this?"

"Why wouldn't I?" Urie asks apathetically, not looking at him.

"Well," Kuroiwa ventures, "in all the time I've known you, I've never known you to take action unless it benefited you in some way."

Something settles in him like a poorly digested meal.

He thinks of the senior investigator saying, "My son spoke of you so highly. He tells me, 'Urie is really something else. He's a a rival, and a good friend.'"

And he feels stupid, for believing anyone could see his shallow attempts at regard and believe them, and respect him for that, and see that deep down he was trying, when really they saw his ugliness out in the open.

"You always were trying to be the best," Kuroiwa continues, and Urie hates him a little more every second, "and I still think, you're the best rival I could ever have. It was amazing, how you could manipulate everything to your advantage. You could walk into a room and tell who were your allies and who were your rivals, and you'd know just what to do to make yourself be the top among all of them once everything was done. "

Urie stands there and lets every word puncture him, like he's a shooting target, and the words are arrowheads.

"And yet, when the people who were allies for you were in trouble, even if their trouble would make trouble for you, or even if their trouble would stain you and drag you down, you'd somehow find a way to save them and make saving them into a point in your favor. And you'd make all your rivals like you somehow, and they'd try to be better because of you, so they'd cite you as their inspiration. I always thought, that's so great. I wish I could do that.

"But my wife's best friend in high school was a ghoul, and the former chief of the CCG wanted her executed, even though she didn't do anything wrong. She didn't know. And he might have been a ghoul himself, but those facts are still there. You don't have anything to gain from saving me, much less from saving her.

"Yet you did it anyway." Kuroiwa finally stops, to draw in a breath. "You freed me, and you're freeing her, and you're rescuing us when some unknown monster is rampaging across Tokyo, and there's nothing you can get out of it. You really are an exemp--"

"I never liked you," Urie says abruptly, turning whip-fast so he's facing Kuroiwa, meeting his gaze with a cold, level stare. 

Kuroiwa grows quiet, and instead of shocked, or horrified, or angered, he only looks calm and curious.

"You always drew all the attention when I thought it should fall on me. I was the one who helped find the auction guests, I helped take down the Big Madam, but all anyone would talk about was you taking down a ghoul with your bare hands. I resented that."

Urie is saying things he's never wanted to say, acknowledging in the open things that had always been private. And he can't stop it. He can't even acknowledge how wrong his facts are.

"I grew up hating your father because he left my father to die. Did you know we had to bury my father in pieces? I won't give you the details of the thoughts my mind has entertained while talking to you, but none of it has ever been polite."

He takes a deep breath. Lets it out, not meeting Kuroiwa's gaze.

"No one could have saved my father, least of all your father. No one could have saved my father, least of _all_ , myself. I never liked you," he says, cautious of the past tense, and careful of the present, "but I respect you."

Something settles between them, like a heavy stone thrown into water. 

"I've always liked you, selfish as you are," Kuroiwa says, "and I always knew you were selfish from the start. But even if I didn't, I would like you now, for giving me the means to save my family."

Urie looks away and holds out the warden's pass key.

Kuroiwa takes it. As he does, his fingers brush against the inside Urie's wrist, just above where his gloves end. "You have something to protect too, don't you?" he asks. "I can see it. Protect him. Save him."

Kuroiwa's hand falls away. Urie turns to leave. The last thing he hears, as he turns a corner, is Kuroiwa's wife asking him what happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, who the hell else let Takeomi out?


	11. Chapter 11

He's approaching Yonebayashi's hospital room when he realizes there voices coming from inside. It's only when he stops just outside the door that he realizes who is speaking.

Sasaki and...Mutsuki.

So Mutsuki finally came to see him. Or more likely, Mutsuki came to visit Yonebayashi, and when he entered the room and saw Sasaki, he panicked so badly he couldn't bring himself to flee. Whatever the case, he's glad, that Mutsuki is finally facing him.

Urie stays still, carefully not listening to the quiet murmur of their voices. He focuses his thoughts on the state of the city, tactical planning, quinque forms, anything to distract himself from the impulse to eavesdrop.

After a few minutes, Mutsuki quietly excuses himself and leaves the room. When he steps into the hallway, he sees Urie and he nods, a tired thank-you in his eyes as he passes Urie by and leaves. Urie watches him, the shape of his back, the slight drooping of his shoulders, his head tipped forward, chin dipping towards his chest. Every line of him is exhausted.

Urie stays watching, until Mutsuki turns a corner and disappears from view. Then he turns and enters Yonebayashi's room.

The lights are dimmed, and the only sounds now are the faint, rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor, the steady drip of fluids and RC suppressant in the IV drip, and Yonebayashi's shallow, pained breaths. The kagune growth protruding from her eye doesn't seem to have grown or changed shape, which is good, but it hasn't gotten any smaller either.

Sasaki is still seated there, leaning over towards the bed with one of Yonebayashi's tiny hands clasped gently within his. Even Sasaki's hands look large against hers.

He doesn't look up, but he does say, "Urie-kun," in greeting, recognizing him without seeing him. Sasaki's RC levels were always beyond what the Qs could touch, are probably now higher than any ghoul alive, and his senses of smell and hearing have probably always been sharper than Urie's.

"Sasaki," he says, taking the empty seat beside his once-mentor. Before, Sasaki had looked older than them, as he should, but Sasaki now looks years younger, an effect on his body from being absorbed by the dragon. "Have you eaten recently?"

Sasaki winces. "No, but I probably should. Do you know what they're doing about food for us?"

"Nishino said Kanou was keeping the bodies of a handful of executed prisoners in his lab for experimentation. Marude's not happy about it, but he ordered a detachment to transport them over, and they're portioning meat out to all of the ghouls assisting us."

"Meat being portioned out to ghouls," Sasaki says quietly, "by Special Class Marude of all people. It feels like the world's been titled on its end, doesn't it?"

"Yeah," Urie agrees. He looks at the wall. "So Mutuski was here."

"He was," Sasaki says, and Urie can feel Sasaki looking at him. "We had a conversation."

"Oh?" Urie asks indifferently. "Was it productive?"

"Mmm," Sasaki agrees, studying Urie for a moment more before turning back to look at his hands, Yonebayashi's hand curled between them. Urie casts him a sideways look, and Sasaki looks deliberately calm, but there's something haunted and pained lurking in the shadows of his eyes.

"I told you before," Urie says him, "if you're going to let it show on your face, then let it out of your mouth, Sasaki."

Sasaki blinks in surprise, looks around at him then and meets his eyes, smiling. "You've really changed, Urie-kun."

" _(So have you.)_ I mean it. You thinking about things by yourself is only going to lead you in circles."

Sasaki sighs. He sets Yonebayashi's hand gently down on the bed and leans back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, a frown tugging at the corners of his mouth as he figures out how to put his thoughts into words.

"Mutuski-kun called himself a monster," he says. "He said he hurt so many people because he was afraid of losing me, and that made him a monster. And I thought, 'Didn't you see what happened outside? You think _that_ makes you a monster?'"

His eyes drift closed.

"When I close my eyes, I see it, burned into the backs of my eyelids. The bodies falling from the sky, blood filling the water. The carnage in the streets and the city reduced to rubble. I'll spend the rest of my life making amends for all I've done. And I made the choice to accept that burden. But I don't know what to do for Mutsuki-kun, to help him accept his burden. I feel responsible, for making him feel like I'd abandoned him."

He opens his eyes again and turns to look earnestly at Urie. "What can I do to help him? Isn't there anything I can do?"

"No," Urie says pitilessly. "There's nothing you can do."

It hurts Sasaki, and he can see that it hurts him, so Urie continues, "You once told me that all losses in this world are due to one's lack of ability. At the time I took your words to heart, and for a while I believed them. But I've realized since then that you're wrong.

"Accidents really do happen. Chance and luck are real. The people around you, they have agency, and they're all making their own chances and trying their best too. Shirazu made his choice to go up against an impossible enemy so he could _save_  us. That was his choice, and I respect him for that. But to think that if someone had been there who had the ability to save him would have changed things is spitting in the face of his memory."

Urie continues mercilessly, the words he's wanted to say for so long pouring out in a flood, so many more words than he's used to saying at once.

"Your way of thinking is self-centered. You think, 'If only I had been there, I could have saved them,' or 'If only I were stronger, they wouldn't have died.' Then you turn around and you project that onto other people and tell them it's they're fault they lost the people who matter to them because they weren't strong enough.

"There's more to all of it than just ability, and there's more to any outcome than just you.

"Mutsuki's actions were a result of Mutsuki's choices. You don't know what he went through before he met you, and you don't know what's gone on in his mind that he hasn't told you. The people around you, the people you think you have sole responsibility for, those people have an entire history's worth of reasons why they act and choose the way they do.

"He chose to take up the knife, he chose to mentor the Oggai and lead them, lead children, into battle. He chose to hurt you and to try to kill your loved ones. _He made that choice_. And he has to live with it himself. You martyring yourself on his behalf isn't going to help him get better, it's only going to make him feel worse."

And just as suddenly be began, he's done. He told Sasaki what he was thinking. He's finally said his piece.

Sasaki is looking at him with wide eyes, and then he takes a deep breath and gives a trembling smile. "Wow, Urie-kun," he says with a weak chuckle. "You really don't pull your punches, do you?"

"Not when it's warranted," Urie agrees.

"Mmm," Sasaki murmurs. "And it was warranted, because you're right. I can't control everything around me, and it's when I act like I can that I make everything worse."

He sighs and looks away, gathering himself, then looks back at Urie and smiles. "You really care for Mutsuki-kun, don't you?"

Urie ducks his head, glancing away, and nods. "...Yeah, I do."

"Good," Sasaki says, and he stands to lean over the hospital bed, brushing Yonebayashi's hair off her forehead so he can lean down and kiss her there. "He needs people who care about him enough that they'll put him first."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to rewrite this about five times because I wasn't sure when exactly in the time frame I should place this and how I should approach it. Given the pacing of the last twenty or so chapters of the final act, it was hard finding a way to put in a moment where I could address the resolution of Mutsuki's character arc. 
> 
> Originally I had started to write this as Urie overhearing Mutsuki's conversation with Kaneki, but I just hated it so much because it felt incredibly lazy. I realized it just had to be Urie and Kaneki talking instead.
> 
> I liked what I wrote of Mutsuki and Kaneki's dialogue, though, so I copied it into a new file and now I'm tinkering with a loose character study over the timeline for Mutsuki.
> 
> I think the next chapter might be the last for this piece!!!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Preface: Mutsuki is not in this and is not even mentioned, unless you blink and catch it. I know I started this as Mutsurie, but this really felt like the best way to finish this piece.
> 
> I want to give a thank you and a shout out to EmWeaCh. Some of what you said in your comment got me thinking about Urie and how I don't relate to him as much as I relate to Mutsuki, which made me start considering the things I have in common with Urie, a father lost in childhood to violence among them. This chapter is a bit personal in respect to that, but I wonder if I'd even have considered this if it hadn't been for your comment, so thank you.

For all that fulfilling his father's duty had been Urie's goal for as long as he can remember, he can count on one hand the number of times he's been back to his family grave. The most important duty that he had, the one that he's overlooked for so long in a quest for revenge against blameless people, was that of a son to his father.

He has to look up the address on his GPS because he can't remember the best way to get there. It's early morning, just a few hours after dawn, and the cemetery is deserted. He has a bucket quietly sloshing water in one hand and two thin bouquets in the other, a rolled-up paper bag tucked carefully under his arm. He counts his way down the rows--nine, ten, eleven--and he thinks this is it, so he turns.

The monuments to other people's dead rise up on either side of him, some gleaming with care, others dimmed with disregard, covered in dirt and fallen leaves. Now he has to count his way past the graves, casting a careful eye over the stones as he gets closer to where he thinks it should be so he can read the family name carved on the front.

Finally it's there, the characters carved in inch-thick lines into the marble, **_URIE_** , with more elegance than Urie could ever hope to manage with the stroke of his brush.

He sets his burdens gently down on the pathway and turns to face the shrine to his family's dead. Urie stands before the thin stone plinth and bows deeper than he has to any superior.

"I'm sorry I've avoided visiting you for so long," he murmurs, even though he knows there's no one here to listen. He doesn't believe in spirits or the afterlife, and he knows his father is beyond hearing. Ash in an urn has no ears to listen, no soul to react to words.

He's saying it for himself, the son who ran away from the truth because he was ashamed at being too small and powerless to save his own father.

"I'm here now," he adds, and holds himself like that, still. After a moment, not knowing what else to say, he moves to grab his belongings and bring them into the grave.

His parents had bought this plot after they finished paying off their mortgage, the kind of morbid thing normal adults do when they're planning for what they'll leave behind. The kind of thing Urie had never thought about until they held a funeral over Shirazu's empty grave. Shirazu didn't have a family plot; if, when, they manage to ever find his body, his remains will be interred in the CCG cemetery, alone.

He sets the bucket down gently, so that the water sloshes up the sides but doesn't spill over, and rests the flowers and paper bag awkwardly to the side. He's seen other people do this, in real life and in movies, but he hasn't done this himself, not since he was about seven and his mother was still alive to show him what to do. At the time, he'd just stood back and watched her.

He pulls off his gloves and slides them into his pocket.

It already looks clean enough, like someone else comes by to tend the grave regularly, but that's not what this is about. Cleaning the grave is a gesture, and it's the gesture he's here to perform. He drops down to his knees and hunts around for any weeds that may have begun sprouting up between the stones with the spring flowering. When he comes up with a handful of uprooted plants, he realizes he should have come better prepared, and has to shove them in the paper bag with the rest of its contents.

It's unlike him, to be unprepared. He feels off-balance just being here.

Finally, once he's satisfied that he's savaged any uninvited plants that might be intruding on this small shrine, he lifts the dipper carefully out of the bucket and lifts it to tip water over the tallest part of the grave. He wipes the back of his hand across his cheek, rubbing away a few droplets that splashed there, then stands and turns his attention to the plinth. Urie picks up a brush and begins, ever so gently, scrubbing the dirt away.

He's finishing the front side of the plinth and has just moved onto the base when he hears a noise behind him and turns, too fast.

There's a woman standing there, just a few feet away, slim and middle-aged with dark brown hair and the fine lines of wrinkles gathered at the corners of her eyes. She looks alarmed and ready to call for help, and then a look of recognition passes over her face. "Kuki-kun?"

Urie looks at her again, taking in the hair that falls the way his does, the mole under her left eye, the pucker line in her cheek where a dimple had turned into a seam of worry as life had placed its burdens on her.

"Aunt Tomoka?" he asks, trying hard not to show his surprise.

The surprise he's feeling is reflected in the incredulity in her face. She takes in the sight of him, shirtsleeves rolled up, water soaking into his jacket, hunched over a grave he hasn't visited in years. The bucket on the ground, the bundle of flowers set off to the side, a paper bag next to it spilling weeds out onto the stones.

"What are you doing here?" she blurts out. The question stings; he deserves it.

He's not sure how to answer. He hadn't planned on encountering anyone else here; he'd come early in the morning just to that effect. He certainly hadn't planned on running into his father's sister.

"I haven't been here in...a while," he ventures, and he doesn't bother offering any excuse or explaining why. "I thought it was...proper."

His aunt looks around at the grave, so well-tended--probably by her, he realizes--and then at him again, his arm still holding a brush to the front of the grave.

She tucks her hair behind her ears, pushes her sleeves up, and steps forward. "I'll help," she says.

"I only have the one brush," Urie says, then fishes in his pocket for a clean handkerchief and holds that out to her. "Is this okay?"

She takes the offering from him and crouches down beside the bucket to dip it into the water, swirling it around and pulling it out to squeeze the excess water away.

They move in silence then. Urie straightens to let her work on the base, his height better suited to reach the high top of the plinth. He works on the right side, scrubbing carefully at the marble until he reaches the line where it meets the base.

"I'm going to--" he says, and gestures at the bucket. His aunt looks up at him from where she's crouched before the grave and nods, scooting back so he can lift the dipper again and let its contents slide out over the marble. Then she leans back into continue working, and Urie steps carefully around her to the left side of the grave.

This side of the plinth is engraved with the names of the people interred here. He recognizes his grandparents, his father's brother he hadn't know had died, and there, the names of his mother and father.

The last time he'd been here, it was for his mother's funeral. He'd felt empty, looking at that grave, and he'd felt full of rage too, at being alone in the world.

He'd joined the junior academy after that, and he hasn't seen his parents' siblings since.

He remembers his mother after his father was killed, how fragile she'd been. She'd seemed to shrink in on herself after that moment, and she was always pulling Urie back from the slightest hint of danger even while pushing him forward into danger in his future. You're going to be a splendid investigator when you grow up, she'd tell him. Oh! If only your father could see the kind of investigator you're going to be, he'd be so proud.

Urie cleans the lines of her name slowly, traces them a finger as if they were a calligraphy brush. _I've become a fine investigator, Mom,_ he thinks. _That was what you wanted for me. I wanted it for myself too. I hope it would make you and Dad proud_.

Then he moves on to his father's name.

Urie bows his head and closes his eyes. _I'm sorry that I stayed away for so long. I'm sorry that it took me so long to be ready to face this._

He'd come here as a child, dragged here by his mother, and looked at this piece of marble and resented it, because his father had been too alive to be a jar of dust buried beneath a pile of stones.

But it wasn't that he resented, it wasn't these things he'd viewed as meaningless ceremonies for dead flesh reduced to ash, it was himself. All along, it was himself.

He'd come to this place, and his powerlessness had overwhelmed him, so he'd run away from it, to someplace where he could be strong enough to turn his grief into a weapon.

He's not sure what to say or how to verbalize his thoughts in a way that's respectful for this moment, so instead he moves, returns to rubbing the brush gently over stone, working it into the lines of their names and down the side of the plinth until he reaches the base and is done.

Silence wraps around him like a blanket, warmed by the sun above, and when he looks up he realizes the sun is higher than it should be. How long has he been here, cleaning the names of his parents on their grave?

He looks around and starts when he sees his aunt. He'd forgotten she was here. He looks down at the rest of the grave and sees the stones gleaming quietly in the light of the sun.

She's regarding him calmly, no coldness or judgement in her eyes. No contempt for the son who neglected his duty too long.

"We saw you on the news," she remarks. "After we were evacuated, they still had some news crews going around, where they could get in. They were interviewing the captain of some squad, but you were there in the background, directing the evacuation efforts. There was a little girl next to you."

"Yonebayashi," he supplies. "My lieutenant. She's my age, even though she doesn't look it."

"Really?" Tomoka asks with evident surprise. "She looked so young on TV, I thought the CCG was recruiting children now."

( _And that's not far from the truth._ )

"But we saw you before that, too," she continues, "not your picture, but mention of you in the newspaper. The CCG has always been so closed-off about news, but after that new director was appointed, there was no shortage of it. And I came across it in the paper one day, a column about you being appointed to direct S2 Squad."

"Yeah," he says, not qualifying that new director in question was almost certainly insane, "yes. I'm the leader of S2 Squad now."

"And at your age!" She clasps her hands together, smiling warmly. "Mikito would be so proud."

Urie looks back at the grave. "Thank you for your assistance."

Tomoka falters, her expression turning hesitant, neutral. "You're welcome," she says, and their eyes both fall on the other half of Urie's bundle, dropped haphazardly in front of the next grave. She approaches the pile and picks up the bouquets with delicate hands.

"These are very beautiful," she remarks, turning them about to admire them. "Did you pick them out yourself?"

"The florist picked them out for me," he says.

"A florist?" she asks, startled. "Open this early?"

"I went yesterday," he explains.

( _What can I do for you, young man?_ the florist asked, smiling at him sweetly. _Are you here for a gift for your lady?_

The corner of his mouth had curled. _Not a lady_.

The florist pressed on. _Then what brings such a gentleman into my shop?_

_Do you make arrangements for grave offerings?_

She smiled. _I do. What would you like?_

_I don't know_ , he admitted. _I don't know what to bring. I haven't been to visit since I was a child._

_A wayward son?_ she asked.

_A son who neglected his duty_ , he agreed.)

His aunt runs a gentle thumb across the petals. "Do you know what these mean?" she asks.

He knew there were people who believed each flower had a meaning, and that pairing flowers together could send a certain message. There was a study to it-- _hanakotoba_ , they called it, the language of flowers--but Urie had always thought it was nonsense. Flowers, like all plants, would rot. Why would you use something intangible to say something meaningful when you would just say what you wanted to say using your own voice?

"This one," she says, drawing one finger over a delicate white blossom, "is a chrysanthemum. You always see them at funerals, but one of their meanings is _truth_."

She turns the bouquets to study another flower, this one with broad white petals and a yellow center. "This is a camellia. They mean different things depending on the color, but the white ones mean _waiting_."

Set between the white flowers are ones with drooping purple petals. Tomoka touches the petal of one of these and says, "This last one is an iris. An old tradition from the festival that predates Children's Day had boys bathe in water sprinkled with iris leaves. They were shaped like swords, so they represented the warrior spirit. That's probably the reason why one of the meanings of the iris is _bravery_.

"You picked a rather cunning florist," Tomoka says, turning the flowers around in her hands again to enjoy the colors, the way their heads bob with the motion and the pull of gravity. "It's hard to put what she meant into words. But based on the flowers, this arrangement probably says something along the lines of, "The truth is I was waiting to be brave...' Something like that."

Urie turns again to look at his family's grave.

The truth is he was waiting to be brave. 

"Would you like to put these in place, Kuki-kun?" his aunt asks.

Urie nods and holds his arms out so she can hand him the flowers. Then she pulls the flowers that are already on the grave, not fresh but still beautiful, from their place, and holds them above the bucket so the water can drain away the water clinging to their stems without dirtying the stones of the grave.

She probably put those flowers there herself, Urie thinks, and yet she's removing them for his.

Urie puts the first bouquet in the left urn, and the second in the right.

With the flowers in place, he reaches for his paper bag. He has fresh incense in there, but the incense in the burner has enough room left to burn for today. Urie leaves the incense there and pulls out his lighter instead. He flicks the wheel and holds the tiny flame to the little sticks of incense jutting from its burner.

The smells of burning wood and scented smoke curl in the air and wrap around him. From the corner of his eye he sees his aunt, bent forward in a bow, her hands pressed flat before her face. She's praying.

Urie doesn't know how to pray. He looks at the white stone of the graves, glinting brightly in the sunshine, and the colors of the flowers, vivid in contrast.

_The truth is I was waiting to be brave._

Afterwards, they walk back to the entrance together in something resembling a companionable silence.

He can feel his aunt watching him, comparing his appearance against his parents, trying to figure out where the boy who ran away from his father's grave became the man who came home to clean it.

When they reach the gate, they put away the bucket and ladle and brush, and they turn to each other to say their goodbyes.

"We'd like to have you over for dinner sometime," she says, "my husband and I, I mean."

"That'd be...nice," Urie says, dipping his chin in a thank you. "I'm busy with work, but if you let me know when--"

"No, no," she says, "you tell us when would be a good time for you. 

"Well," he says, "if it doesn't inconvenience you. Thank you."

She smiles up at him. He remembers when she was taller than him once, a long time ago. She holds up the wet handkerchief he'd given her to help him clean the grave. "I'll keep this and wash it for you. You can get it back when you come for dinner."

Urie quirks an eyebrow, almost smiling. "Isn't that extortion?"

"I'm only trying what I had to do with my brother," she says, something in her tone sounding very much like a little sister, " _aaaaall_  the time."

Urie does smile then, thinking of his father, much younger, with a younger sister trying to keep his attention focused on her. He reaches into his pocket, brushes aside his gloves--he'd forgotten he wasn't wearing them--and pulls out the little silver case he keeps his business cards in. He pulls one out and holds it out to her.

"It's best not to call me at the office, because they won't route you to me. But if you call my mobile, I'll answer."

She takes the card and tucks it carefully into her pocket.

Urie looks down at her, and she smiles.

"It was a surprise," she says, "and a pleasant one. It was good to see you, Kuki-kun. Take care at work."

They bow to one another like recent acquaintances and part ways.

Urie doesn't need to use his GPS to get home, but he opens it anyway to bookmark the way to this tiny cemetery as he begins his walk home.

He'll be back. Someday. Soon.

He has family here.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I tried my level best to get funeral customs as exact as I could, but Google did not have the answers to some of my questions, so if I got anything wrong, I'm very sorry. I had to make guesses or inferences on a lot of things.
> 
> In the end I was able to find a video on YouTube showing a family cleaning their family grave (which is...kind of weird, when you think about it, so I hope viewing it wasn't disrespectful. The man recording appeared to be an American ex-pat who married into a Japanese family and would hopefully have gotten their permission to record).
> 
> Unfortunately,I couldn't get clarification on exactly which members of a family are interred in a family grave, so if it seems wrong who I included, please let me know.
> 
>  _Hanakotoba_ (lit.: flower words) is the Japanese language of flowers. I have absolutely no way of authenticating that any of my twenty-minute Google sources are correct about what the flowers I mentioned mean.
> 
> Thank you all so, so much for reading this and for your support. I really enjoyed writing it and I feel like I've come to understand Urie as a character better because of it.


End file.
